The Restorative Impulse

"I believe that the Restorative Justice movement is a manifestation of something much larger than itself: a fundamental shift in how Western culture understands the nature of our species and the nature of the Universe.... Restorative justice was never about crime for me. It was always about community and how we live with one another. However, I did not understand at the beginning how much we had to change our worldview to shift how we respond to things that go wrong.... The restorative impulse requires us to look at the context of the situation, to look at our own role in harmful behavior, and to recognize that harm to anyone else is harm to us as well."~Kay Pranis, The Restorative Impulse, Tikkun magazine, Winter 2012

Considering Paradigm

How do we want to live together? Many of us say we want cooperation. I think most of us know that we need each other, that we are happier when we do things together, that we are social beings. Some may have given up on that, and this is sad, because we do not thrive in isolation. Yet, I appreciate the daily challenge it is to co-operate - to weave freedom and stability, spontaneity and order, and the needs of the individual with the collective good.

The social discipline window to the left shows some choices we have when it comes to how to approach our social world. It suggests that with high limit setting and discipline AND high encouragement and nurture, we can most effectively work together.

I'm curious if anyone sees their own actions and experience in this window, or that of your parents, teachers, or others with structural power? I'm even more curious if you've unconsciously carried this - or its opposite - forward in your own social interactions. In my experience of growing up, going to school, and then teaching in the United States in the latter half of the 20th Century, I've seen swings from one side of the window to the other in reaction, I think, to sweeping social changes, and/or fear of those social changes, and/or simply in reaction to what had gone before. I know I've experienced them all, and tried them all, too!

How Paradigm Affects Us

The social discipline window, above, suggests that with high limit setting and discipline AND high encouragement and nurture, we can most effectively work together. This modified social discipline window on the left shows us why we work best when we work together, and how it creates the best conditions for learning - a relaxed and alert brain.

To be effective, I think we need to stop, take a look at our worldview (including our blind spots), and consider what actually works best to create the conditions we want.

In my experience as a parent, educator, and all around human being, I find that a Restorative "With" Paradigm offers the best opportunity to meaningfully engage with the most people with the most cooperation of anything I know of so far. It takes some energy up front (particularly if people are used to something different), but in the long run it works way better and takes LESS work than doing things "to" people or "for" people, or reacting to what arises when we do nothing.

Restorative Principles

In culling out principles, I'm looking at the degree to which what we're doing is restorative and then asking, what is/is not there? The idea (also first inspired by Dominic Barter) is that the degree to which any one of these is absent, whatever we're doing is that much less likely to be restorative. And likewise, the more they are present, the more restorative whatever we're doing is likely to be.

Right now, I'm working with an overarching understanding that we are interdependent, and five principles which support living well in this reality: inclusion, voluntariness, mutual comprehension, self-responsibility, and shared/balanced power.

Interdependence is a state of being, which is sometimes remembered and sometimes not. It is an overarching experience that we are always having and that restorative process supports us to remember (re + member, put it back together, yes?). One thing I'm wondering is if conflict by its nature is simply a state of dismembered consciousness of interdependence? (Hm. When I started writing I thought this might be more straightfroward to express, but there it is, such as it is.) Which is really OK, actually. Sometimes we get to Kiss the Hag to remember how much we love Her ;)

The first two principles, inclusion and voluntariness, are critical aspects of any restorative process, including how we live together in every day life. In the Restorative Circle process to address conflict, developed by Dominic Barter in Brazil beginning in the 1990's ("RC") , I see them right from the beginning and throughout. For example, in the "Pre-Circle" everyone is asked who needs to be there, and throughout the process, no one is forced to participate.

The three terms mutual comprehension, self-responsibility, and shared/balanced power come from specifically from the words used to describe the phases of the RC. The idea, as I understand it, is that we want to begin to restore connection by understanding each other, take responsibility for ourselves by looking into and sharing what we were looking for when we did whatever we did, and then share and balance power through making decisions together about what we'd like to do going forward.

Writing this out in linear fashion, (with words in lines!) doesn't fully express it, because all of the principles inform each other, no? Just as when we move through conflict the phases don't follow each other in linear fashion. Indeed, when I try to draw it out, of course a circle or a five pointed star may more accurately represent it. i'm working on it ;)

I want to add that as wordy as all of what I just tried to express is (reflecting the challenge and depth of what it might take to understand this and live it) and the limitation of words and lines, I do find that having a list of these six principles in my head is really useful for when I feel the need to check into what's going on - when I'm looking to open up something that feels constricted in a process.

"Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land